She Burns
by InTruth
Summary: Claire Littleton has been to Hell before. Or so she thought.
1. Meditation

_Disclaimer: I own nothing "Lost" related whatsoever._

**She Burns**

Claire Littleton had visited Hell before.

She visited Hell when she was seven and Mother had slapped her for snitching that Mars Bar from the market. She hadn't even really wanted it, but she was hungry and Mother had said "No sweets before dinner, Claire," and she knew how Mother hated coconut. And for some reason she didn't quite understand, she had wanted to make her mother angry.

So she took the candy bar, and burned for her crime.

She had burned again at twelve, when Daddy died. This was a different kind of Hell, a Hell where everything was black ashes and sympathetic faces, and there was no one to tuck her into bed with gentle hands and tobacco blazers. It was a cold Hell, and Mother's piercing gaze watched her pitilessly from every sooty corner.

It was a Hell she had decided to adopt, and wore it with icy fury on her sleeve. Mother hated her for it, which at once made it easier and harder to bare.

When she was nineteen, Claire came Hell again, but this time Hell was named Thomas, and had dark hair and cold blue eyes that made him seem so _romantically_ remote. This Hell was two pink lines on a strip that made her vomit and cry, and it was the sound of a door slamming shut forever. In this new Hell, her stomach grew and Thomas shrank until he disappeared. Seven burning months passed like this, with a crazy psychic on her trail, a burgeoning terror as her due date loomed like a thundercloud, and countless, endless bills. She had doctor's bills and rent to pay for the spacious apartment she couldn't afford. She had food bills because no matter what she ate she was still sallow and hungry, and apparently her old diet of chips and coffee wasn't good for the baby. She had to pay for the adoption forms, and she had to pay Malkin when she returned to him twice in a panic, and she had to pay the phone bills when he called her in the middle of the night.

It was in this new Hell that Claire Littleton learned that her life was not truly her own to live.

So this time, she went to Hell herself instead of waiting for it to take her again. She went because she was eight months pregnant and she had no money, and Malkin was the only one who was offering a way out.

Claire Littleton was almost twenty when she boarded flight 815 to Australia and went to Hell for the final time.

* * *

Something was wrong.

Claire felt her breath freeze in her chest, heard her pulse crash in her ears as though for the first time. She blinked back inexplicable tears and swallowed, trying to force away the crippling, crushing, familiar terror through sheer strength of will.

Confusion swirled through her mind like poisonous gas. What was going on? What horror had been unleashed to break this awful tide inside of her? It didn't make sense, she couldn't understand...

She had been kneeling in the cave with Charlie, clutching her precious, perfect Aaron to her chest almost dizzy with joy and glorious relief. The new night around them was peaceful and sedate, as though all the stifling anxiety that had plagued the day had dissipated when Charlie had returned with her son. Light, quiet breeze slipped around them, dispelling any vestiges of sweat and pain, and for the first time since she she could remember, she was... happy.

And without warning, without any signal at all, she had been plunged into a Hell unlike any she had known.


	2. Hesitation

_Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from "Lost" or anything else I reference below._

_Author's Note: To anyone who has read my previous endevor, "Prisons"- Thanks so much for your patience. The finale unfortunately pretty much derailed my plot, so I am taking a break to tackle this instead._

* * *

**Hesitation**

Claire had been waiting in the airport for one hour.

She hadn't had to bother with check in- the few things that still fit her barely filled out her travel bag, and anyway, she could shop in Los Angeles. The security guard had taken half a glance at her and let her through the metal detector without issue or comment- in fact, he had hardly seemed to see her at all. The waiting area for flight 815 turned out to be practically on top of the Gates entrance, and even though she was quite early, the only seat left unclaimed by bags or windbreakers was the one closest to the ticket desk.

And so, hardly fifteen minutes after she had waddled out of the taxi that zoomed off before she could pay, Claire was settling into the unexpectedly soft waiting area chair and mentally imploring her flight to take off early. She ached with impatience, desperate for distraction from the diaphanous sense of foreboding that tickled her neck like the promise of a kiss.

So when the quick of her nails started to bleed from her nervous biting, she reached for the tattered Reader's Digest lying discarded on the seat beside her.

The featured article was called "Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Adoption."

Claire's throat went dry.

"_It's a coincidence,"_ she thought blankly. _"Nothing else. Nothing at all."_

After Thomas left, many magical things had turned into hard coincidence...

"_Coincidence?"_ echoed her mother's voice inside her head. _"I'm afraid not, dear. __And I wouldn't let my guard down just yet if I were you..." _

Claire blinked, but somehow she couldn't muster the energy for surprise.

"_W-what? Mother, you... you're a fine person to lecture me about fate!"_

"_Don't be naïve, Claire, you know quite well it's going too smoothly. At the least they should have asked if you've been seen by a doctor. For heaven's sake, it's almost as though they've been expecting you!"_

"_Don't be... ridiculous..." _she thought, and she gripped the armrests as it hit her just how many times she herself had been scolded in kind. She brushed a trembling palm against her forehead, slicking away sudden trickles of sweat.

"_What are you going to do?" _

_Do..._

"What am I going to do?" she whispered aloud, but none of the passengers now bustling around her seemed to have time to offer her an answer.

What was she going to _do_?

_Everything happens for a reason, Claire._

_There is no such thing as coincidence, Claire._

_It has to be this flight. Only this flight..._

"SECTIONS EIGHT TO TWENTY-THREE NOW BOARDING. SECTIONS EIGHT TO TWENTY-THREE NOW BOARDING FLIGHT EIGHT-ONE-FIVE TO LOS ANGELES."

And all of a sudden, it wasn't her choice to make. The stewardess was prodding her shoulder and telling her that it would be wise to board now miss, and she was walking down the shuddering ramp and pushing through to her seat and lifting into the air as her ears popped and her eyes ran and...

And the only thing she wanted was for Mother to hold her.

* * *

_Thunder and lightening and blossoming fire._

_The deafening crash of nature turning on it's own machinations._

_Metal, groaning and stirring, melting in the scorching inferno._

_Freedom._

* * *

"Claire? Claire, what's the matter, what's wrong?" 

That was Charlie's voice, eager and anxious as always, trying to pry his way through her protective fog.

"You're freezing, Claire! Where's Jack? Somebody get Jack, Claire needs Jack!"

Her skin _was_ cold, she mused distantly. She could scarcely feel her arms wrapped so tightly around the soft swaddled bundle. Odd, the Island always seemed so terribly hot...

"I'll take the baby, Charlie, you help Claire. Get her to lie down, cover her with a blanket and..."

Something shifted in her arms, something warm and pure was being eased out of her death grip-

Aaron.

No, no, they couldn't have Aaron. They wouldn't take him, not again, no no-

"_No!"_ The cry tore from her lips and Claire lurched to her feet. Her senses tore back to her with searing clarity, Charlie, Aaron, the heat, the cave... the fear...

Her Hell.

She stared about her, swiveling like a hunted animal. Everything was familiar, normal. Nothing seemed to have changed, except that Charlie was approaching her with relief and confusion etched in his face and Sun wore the guardedly calm expression that meant she had been _reacting_ again.

"What..." She tried to speak through lips suddenly cracked and bleeding, tried to moisten them with her parched tounge. "Didn't you, didn't you feel that... at all?"

"Claire, what's going on? Nothing's happened, everything's all right..."

"_No,"_ she saw with horrifying insight. _"Everything's changed. It won't ever be all right again. But... how..._"

**BOOM.**

_Heat, fear, pain, broken like pus from a fetid blister._

And Claire Littleton, shivering under Charlie's protective grip, had her answer.

* * *

_Sorry for the cliffhanger! More to follow..._


End file.
